Friday, July 11, 2008

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

3rd Annual SEM Scholarship Contest Winner is…..

Posted: 11 Jul 2008 10:21 AM CDT

OK, you’ve waited long enough. It’s time to reveal the winner of this year’s Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship contest. I could fluff this intro out, but I know you’ll skip down to the winning entry anyway, so here it is:

Winner: 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics - Linda Bustos

Congratulations to Linda Bustos who won the majority of votes from our expert judges. Linda’s entry was a great template for any “how to” article.

  • Enticing title.
  • Engaging questions at the beginning of the post.
  • Short, easily digestible, paragraphs with easy-to-read bullet points.
  • Lots of graphics to break-up the text and actually demonstrate her tips.
  • Lots of useful links.

Linda walks away with our mega-scholarship prize package and the honor of beating out some strong competition. Special recognition to our other four finalists:

Many thanks to all who entered the contest, read the entries, helped spread the word, and to our panel of esteemed judges.

I know all of our entrants are just dying to know how they faired, so I’ve shared the Google Analytics numbers of each entry below.

Until next year!


Can’t see the table? Click here.

Brin, Page, & Yang: What Do You Think They Were Saying?

Posted: 11 Jul 2008 09:21 AM CDT

If a picture is worth a thousand words then this one is worth at least twice that. This photo is from July 10 the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. Yahoo's founder Jerry Yang (in middle with head in hands) is talking with Google founders Larry Page (l) and Sergey Brin (r). Considering the current state of affairs of the parties represented here I have to suspect that this conversation may have gone something like this:

Larry: So Jerry, how's it going?

Jerry: How do you think it's going?!

Sergey: Do you think I should pack light or heavy when I get shot into space?

Well, you get the picture ;-). What do you think a caption for this photo should read? What do you think may have been said amongst these new media giants?

C'mon, Pilgrims, it's Friday. Get creative and give us your thoughts.

Have a great weekend!

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Pilgrim’s Picks for July 11 - iPhone 3G Edition

Posted: 11 Jul 2008 08:35 AM CDT

I won’t lie to you, today’s going to be a tough news day for us internet marketers. Just about all of the focus is on Apple’s Launch of the iPhone 3G.

Fortunately, I found these morsels to share and we’ll have other stories up, as we discover them.

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Your Opportunity to Guest Blog Has Never Been Better

Posted: 10 Jul 2008 09:06 PM CDT

Many established and well respected blogs within the online marketing community have recently started to make their audiences available to a variety of new voices. The opportunity for new bloggers to communicate their ideas on internet marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, paid search, affiliate marketing, and social media marketing have never been greater.

Today Michael Gray announced on his blog that he was ready to start accepting guest bloggers. He didn't say how long this opportunity might exist but he said he would try it out and then see how it goes. In his post he makes it clear that this is an opportunity for any blogger to have a chance to reach out and communicate to his audience, not just another "A" list blogger.

A day before Michael's announcement, Jeremy Shoemaker announced that he would also be accepting guest posts, potentially for a limited time while he was away. Jeremy's only criteria for guest posting was that the articles be on topic and only published on his site and nowhere else.

Three months ago Donna Fontenot, owner of SEO Scoop, made it part of her mission to turn SEO Scoop into a platform were established and especially new and relatively unknown bloggers could guest blog about anything related to search. Donna said:

"I'd love it if SEO Scoop became known as a good place for up-and-comers to start their rise up the ladder."

Clearly the opportunity has never been better for those who have great ideas and want to blog to a larger audience of knowledgeable and influential people to do so. But before you get started on your next great blog post I encourage you to check out a post by Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.net. He has defined six key criteria that any new guest blogger should take into account before submitting a post.

1. Research the Blog
2. On Being Yourself
3. Look for Gaps in the blog
4. Sell Yourself
5. Be Reliable
6. Add Value

I strongly believe the first five items Darren reference can all be summed up in item six, Add Value, so that is the one topic that I want to briefly touch on. When you guest blog it is all about bringing a new perspective to an already established property. In my opinion the best success a guest post can have is to create a positive conversation in that blogs community. Adding value to any community will insure that not only will you most likely be invited back to guest blog again, but that odds are you may also have the opportunity to guest blog in other places as well.

As a final aside, I want to place some emphasis on the attitude Michael Gray has taken with his let's see what happens to guest blogging approach. What this means for guest bloggers is that the posts that get submitted to Michael may strongly influence his willingness to have new guest bloggers. So please always remember the things you do and the posts you write will have further impact as well as having potential consequences for other guest bloggers.

Do We Need Online Privacy Laws for Advertising?

Posted: 10 Jul 2008 04:36 PM CDT

The US Senate is holding a series of hearings on online advertising, behavioral targeting and privacy to determine whether they should consider legislation protecting consumers online in these areas.

The Senate has turned to Google, Microsoft, the FTC, Facebook, privacy watchdogs and others for their opinions in the matter. Some, like Google, welcomed a “comprehensive privacy law that would establish a uniform framework for privacy and procedures to punish bad actors.”

The FTC, on the other hand, believes that the industry could self-regulate: “The commission is cautiously optimistic that the privacy issues raised by online behavioral advertising can be effectively addressed through self-regulation.”

Perhaps most interesting, though, were the senators’ opinions. The New York Times reports:

“We have a solution in search of a problem,” he [Sen Jim DeMint, R-SC] said [in response to the FTC's proposal], noting that Internet companies are developing various ways to protect the privacy of users. “By the time the F.T.C. acts, the industry would be far ahead,” he said.

One legislative question largely unaddressed was whether Congress should set standards for how Internet service providers monitor the actions of their users to create information for advertising. [CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Leslie] Harris alone called for such a law.

Senator Byron Dorgan, the Democrat of North Dakota who chaired the hearing, said he had invited representatives of Internet providers to discuss the issue and they declined. So he said he would schedule another hearing entirely devoted to hearing from the I.S.P.s about their advertising plans.

I think Dorgan’s right—ISPs seem to be a bigger issue lately. Because while Google, Facebook and their ilk have collected substantial data on us, it’s almost always been because we volunteered it to them, registered with them, etc. But does owning the “pipe” give an ISP the right to observe what you’re doing and change content based on that activity?

The Senate plans to continue investigating throughout the year. I guess this just goes to show you—not everyone in Congress would describe the Internet as “a series of pipes” ;) .

What do you think? Should the Senate pass a law in this area, or will the FTC and the industry step up? And where do ISPs fall in here?

(Link to the full text of the hearings via SEL.)

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